Debate : 28030


Off-Topic / Debate / 28030	28029 \| 28031

Subject:	Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
Newsgroups:	lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date:	Tue, 31 Oct 2006 06:22:47 GMT
Viewed:	4918 times

Alright, where were we... let’s see...

In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:

BINGO.

You seem to think you’ve “nailed me” on this point because I have admitted that I have had and may still have some nonrational beliefs. I don’t get it.

Not at all. I’m just seeing common ground.

Ah, OK. It’s silly how things can be taken the wrong way in a written debate that would be cleared up in an instant if we were speaking in person. But then again, I’m not much for debating in person. I find I need much more time to compose my thoughts than normal conversation allows, and I like to read over what I’ve written a few times to make sure I’m making a modicum of sense, sharpen arguments, and clear up any ambiguous wordings.

But you will probably always be irrational though you strive to be rational. You are a closet Vulcan! :-)

Too true. I will probably always be wasteful, though I try not to be, always be more inconsiderate than I mean to be, and always be mortal, though it would be nice if I could do more about that.

But just because it’s difficult not to be somewhat irrational doesn’t speak in favor of irrationality any more than it does in favor of wastefulness, inconsiderateness, mortality, or (from the previous post’s example) racism.

What I am trying to get you to realize is that we both strive to be rational; that should be a given. But in irrational matters, that is, things that go beyond the peruse of science, you take a “shrug” position and I take XYZ position.

Right, the main difference here seems to be that you denigrate the so-called “shrug” position, while I (and others who have joined in on this topic) staunchly defend withholding belief in absence of evidence as the only rational position. The only position it makes sense to take.

If you don’t want to make sense, you are welcome to believe whatever you like, but one of the main points I’ve been trying to make is that you should not expect other people to take your irrational beliefs seriously, nor to treat with any intellectual dignity arguments you make that uses an irrational belief as a premise.

I don’t “know” if my belief is correct, and I can’t prove it rationally, either. But I’ve at least taken the leap (and freely admit it). You, OTOH, just sit on the fence and don’t commit one way or the other

Again, you are painting in a positive light this “leap” into irrationality that I think hardly deserves praise, and at the same time you paint me (and others who have chimed in) as if we are intellectually lazy by not just making something up out of thin air and believing it with entirely unwarranted certitude.

I also think you are setting up a false dichotomy by saying we “don’t commit one way or the other” as if the question of the the origin of the universe has a single potential answer that one either believes in or doesn’t. This ignores all sorts of possibilities about the origin of the universe (many of which have been mentioned here already, including ones that don’t include a creator), and goes to show that simply picking an irrational belief and running with it can close your mind to other completely valid possibilities.

I find the question of our origin VERY compelling, and my mind (using a mixture of rationality and irrationality) tells me that it is the work of a Creator.

But anybody could come up with anything based on a “mixture of rationality and irrationality”. That is why conclusions arrived at in that fashion will never be rationally compelling to anyone else (and why you should not expect them to be).

But what could possibly be the purpose of “proclaiming the Good News” if it is not intended to convince people of anything?

Well, it is, but that’s not MY job. I proclaim, the HS does the rest.

But the proclaiming doesn’t actually accomplish anything, right? The HS just comes by and actually convinces (or doesn’t convince) people when you’re done proclaiming, right?

So it’s kind of like when a boat has a fake captain’s wheel at the front. God tells you to go “steer” the boat by vigilantly manning that captain’s wheel, but the wheel actually does nothing. The HS is up in the captain’s deck using the actual boat controls to steer things. You were just given busy work to stay out of trouble, right? :)

The point is to help people live better; to give them direction; to give them purpose and meaning for their lives.

I am curious how you can even know what the point is? Is this something you deduced rationally, or another “leap”?

I guess some people really do need busy work to give their life direction, purpose, and meaning. And perhaps in the big scheme of things, we’re all just doing various busy work to fill out our lives. But I’d certainly much rather figure out my own busy work and come up with my own meaning and purpose for life than to do the bidding of an irrational being as interpreted through an ancient book.

I do what I think God wants out of a sense of gratitude for what He has done for me. He gave me existence, and he gave me a ride in this amusement park called life. I think life is pretty cool, and I think God wants us all to enjoy it, and so I do what I can to help facilitate that.

But it would seem only logical that if God wanted us to be enjoying life even one smidgen more than we already are, he’d bring it about instantly. Or rather, we never would have been less happy than he wanted us to be in the first place. I always find these elaborately roundabout schemes being attributed to an all-powerful God to be quite ridiculous on the face of it.

Because if the Holy Spirit is what actually convinces people, how could it not be infinitely more efficient to just have the Holy Spirit convince everyone in the blink of en eye? Or if not everyone is going to be convinced, everyone could be convinced or not in the blink of an eye.

I suspect you will take this as just another example of me Monday Morning Quarterbacking, but I fully stand by my defense of the practice. If you posit a being with certain motivations and unlimited power and intelligence with which to act on those motivations, but their supposed actions do not line up with what even a semi-intelligent and somewhat-powerful being with those motivations could be expected to do, it would seem to follow that you are mistaken about this being’s existence, his motivations, his power, his intelligence, or some combination of the above.

The gift of free will. We have been given total freedom (as far as we know) to do with our lives what we will.

I’ve never found this to be a compelling argument, though I can see how it might look like a promising lead for the theist who desperately wants to his beliefs in God to somehow square with the state of the world (when they obviously otherwise would not).

The idea, as I understand it, is that God wants us all to be maximally happy, but that desire is overridden by his stronger desire that we have total free will.

I suppose the immediate question is: what’s so good or important about total free will? Certainly we humans do not treat total free will as some sort of ultimate good, so why would you imagine God does? We humans limit free will all the time because even we (with our puny intellects) can see that it is better to limit free will in cases where it will destroy people’s happiness and/or cause avoidable suffering.

I’ve observed that theists often like to draw analogies between the God/humankind relationship and the parent/child relationship. Well, just think of how much parents limit their children’s free will. And they do it because they love their children, and because they are trying to maximize their happiness and minimize their suffering (or the suffering of others).

Now, you might reply that a parent is simply teaching a child how to exercise their free will properly. If that’s the case, you would then expect God as the ultimate parent to teach every single human ever to perfectly exercise their free will so as to maximize happiness and avoid suffering.

But of course, this is not what we find to be the case. And truth be told, we don’t even have total free will. Our options are always limited by our circumstances, and everyone is in different circumstances. So we all have different amounts of free will in practice. What could possibly explain this arbitrarily-assigned endowment of limited free will?

Of course, to anyone not encumbered by the mental albatross of irrational axiomatic belief in an all-powerful, all-good God, the amounts of suffering and happiness in this world (not to mention the fact of people being born into wildly varying circumstances that drastically affect their happiness, suffering, and actual amount of freedom) are no longer quite so bedeviling a mystery. Thanks to science, now have a good (and ever improving) body of knowledge of about how natural selection has lead humans to have natural impulses both to help and to harm, to be kind and to be cruel. And of course the non-theist is not left needing to explain “acts of God” that cause untold suffering and death, or to reprehensibly put a “positive spin” on such tragedies.

But the onus is on you to rationally explain how a universe suddenly just came into being.

I don’t see why. Clearly the onus is on someone who posits the existence of a supernatural being to make the case for its existence, but what am I positing that needs defense? I have not even said that the universe “suddenly came into being”. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it has always existed.

Illogical.

What is illogical about something having always existed?

Would it be illogical to posit that the universe will continue on forever? If not, and the universe can head infinitely in the future direction of time, I see no reason why it could not extend infinitely in the past direction as well.

But that’s mere speculation on my part. My understanding is closer to what DaveE was saying about the question really not being framed properly. Over the past 100 years scientists have come to think of time quite differently, and it would now seem that time simply did not exist before the big bang.

Right. It’s unknowable. And yet here it is. So how are you going to explain the unexpainable?

But why on Earth do I have to have that answer?

Because the universe exists!

I feel like we’re talking past each other here, John. Yes, the universe exists, and yes, I cannot explain why. I do not see any reason to think that simply making up an explanation (especially an internally inconsistent one) and holding to it, could somehow be seen as a positive instead of a negative. It would seem especially misguided and dangerous if such ad-hoc explanations became grounds on which to base your major life decisions. It would seem as dangerous as tossing a dart at a cork board full of random beliefs that could drastically affect how you would conduct your life.

What are you suggesting must be true if I don’t have that answer?

That the answer is irrational, illogical, and unknowable. Just like God.

Just like an infinite number of supernatural beings you might posit whose attributes are internally inconsistent.

I do not accept on your word that science cannot explain the origin of the universe (if there can be said to be one). But even if I did accept that, it would still in absolutely no way, shape, or form lend support to the existence of the internally inconsistent supernatural being you call God.

In fact, an internally inconsistent supernatural being is one of the few theories we could safely rule out as an explanation for the origin of the universe, because the idea literally makes no sense.

He gives us life and free will and says, “enjoy it.”

Even to those babies who live a matter of hours, suffer, and then die? What free will do they have the chance to exercise, and how could “enjoy it” be taken as anything but a sadistically ironic sentiment for them?

Now, that’s an extreme example (but one which your view would still need to explain), but everyone else can be seen as falling somewhere on the very wide spectrum between that wretchedly cruel existence and someone born into a life of opportunity and ease.

But my overall question about free will remains: why would God allow us enough free will to harm others when not even a half-decent human parent would allow their child such leeway.

Is it so hard to imagine a world your God could have created in which people get even more freedom than in this world (say, by never having people be born into limiting circumstances), and yet where God could still protect us from the harm our freely willed choices might otherwise cause (such as when a parent sees their child about to hit another child and grabs their arm, or stops their child as he’s running into the street so he doesn’t get hit by the Ice Cream truck)?

And once again, if you are positing an all-powerful being with such motivations, and even I can think of a more efficient way for that being to bring about his goals more completely, that seems to strongly imply that this being does not exist, or that you are mistaken about the being’s powers or motivations.

You may or may not be more hopeful than the average atheist, but either way, it makes the actual possibility of there being a Creator with a Purpose 0% more likely to be true.

Agreed. But I disagree WRT hope. An atheist has NO hope after this life.

Yes, well, I doubt anybody will have hope after this life, whether they were a theist or not.

But really, what are you saying here? You acknowledge that wishful thinking about an afterlife does nothing to increase the chances of their being an afterlife. Are you suggesting that people should try to make themselves believe in an afterlife anyway for the misguided hope it provides?

Then that would negate that particular pile of evidence, but it wouldn’t necessarily negate the possibility of an elephant behind the door (which cannot by definition be proven to exist or not exist by science)

But you didn’t answer my question: what would you make of the person who went on insisting with irrational certainty that there was an elephant in that closet. Do you really think that person is being more reasonable than the person who simply acknowledges that we don’t know what’s in the closet.

By the way, I’d point out that there are certain things we can rule out being in the closet. For example, there could not be a hoohoo in the closet, because a hoohoo was defined as a married bachelor, and such a thing cannot exist because the definition is internally inconsistent. In the same way, we could be sure that your God is not in the closet.

I would say that blind religious faith is a state-of-having-beliefs-about-matters-upon-which-science-is-(deliberately)-silent.

As I’ve tried to point out, this may be true for you, but I think in the larger non-John Neal world, there are plenty of blind religious beliefs that are about matters on which science has plenty to say.

We have blind faith in a LOT of things. Driving on a 2 way street for example. When I actually THINK about it, it makes me sick how trusting I have to be of complete idiots (all the while never knowing even when!)

I think there is a world of difference between blind faith and sensible (though always tentative) trust. I imagine the whole reason it “makes you sick” is because you recognize that there is indeed some chance that someone else will not obey the basic rules of the road and thereby harm or kill you. So you really don’t have blind faith in other drivers. I imagine you are always somewhat cautious while driving, keeping an eye out for those who might not obey the rules.

If you saw someone coming the opposite way 1/2 a mile off start to swerve into your lane, I imagine you might slow down a bit. You’d probably trust that they’ll get back into their own lane, and perhaps posit possible rational reasons for their actions (is there some roadkill they’re avoiding? a pothole? are they drunk?), but if you truly had blind faith, why slow down at all? Someone with true blind faith could hit the gas and not have the slightest worry about the other car not getting back into their lane.

I’d be willing to postulate that people who believe in God are more generous than those who don’t. Would you agree?

I can’t say that’s been my experience. It would be an interesting area of study, though, if you quantify generosity.

Who cares? They by definition are unprovable anyway. If I’m forced between the choice of believing in unicorns which causes me to do good, or believe in a Creator which causes me to commit mass murder, I choose unicorns.

On what basis? Don’t you hold the Creator to be the ultimate source of moral authority? How do you morally judge a belief in a Creator that leads someone to commit mass murder without already having a belief in a Creator in the first place?

You are going through life acting on your beliefs about what is morally right and wrong based on some nonrationally-derived religious beliefs.

Deeply examine your own motivation for acting how you do. Is it completely rational?

I like to think so. At least to the extent I have some say over and/or awareness of my motivations.

And if not, does it matter upon what your irrationality is based?

No, it wouldn’t matter upon what it’s irrationality is based, but it would matter that it is irrational instead of rational.

Our actions say that somebody is wrong because we do opposite things. That is how peaceful religions can co-exist while having completely different beliefs. Religions that promote violence and intolerance are “proved” wrong by their messages.

I don’t follow. You could both be peaceful and still be wrong, or you could both be violent and yet both be right.

If you judge beliefs by the actions that come of them, how did you originally judge your Christian beliefs approvingly if your morals also derive from your religious beliefs?

I only wish their demise because they wish mine.

An eye for an eye, a wished demise for a wished demise. So you don’t buy into the whole “love your enemies” or “turn the other cheek” thing?

They wish my demise because they can’t tolerate me as I am.

But as you are = peaceful because you believe that’s how God wants you to be. By the same token, as they are = violent because that’s now they believe God wants them to be. So they can’t tolerate you how you are, and you can’t tolerate them how they are.

As long as they are peaceful and respectful to all, I have no problem with them.

Peace, or else BLAMMO!

That’s pretty much what Jesus said, right?

Even if it is necessarily true that without God or any “moral authority” we are lost in a sea of relative morality, this would still make it 0% more likely that God actually exists. Again to posit that would be an argument from wishful thinking.

It’s not an argument that God necessarily exists, but more that he needs to exist. We need an authority to which we can all defer, and that authority is Goodness. I call it “the ideal” at it’s most secular, and “God” in religious terms.

But just as wishful thinking doesn’t bring things into existence, neither does your perceiving a need for them. And really, all that can be said is that you perceive a use. There may well be no authority to which we can all defer. If that’s just how things are, that’s just how they are. You might wish it were different, but that doesn’t make it so.

Okay, okay. I would consider the guy a whack-job extraordinaire.

Yay! I win! Debate’s over.

Right? Maybe not... :/

But I think that equating a belief in a Creator with the belief in hypothetically-silly scenario XYZEE is stretching it. It seems within the realm of possibility to me that the universe could have been created by an omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, unknowable God. And that would have some consequence for my life.

Well, yes, I tried to make it a silly scenario, but only to point out that the doctor’s silly belief and your own religious beliefs are built on an equally firm (or rather completely flimsy) foundation. Perhaps you find your own beliefs less ridiculous, but I and others really have no way appraising your beliefs as any more solidly based.

The unseen unicorns can burn in hell for all it matters to me:-)

Ah, now you understand how I feel about your unseen God. :)

Sounds like a conspiracy? I don’t see how. Obviously I’m doing my best to parallel what we know of how the gospels were written. But I have never thought of the Gospels as some sort of conspiracy. So I’m not really sure what you mean.

If there really wasn’t something special about Jesus life and death, WHY bother writing books and books about him claiming there were?

Oh, I’m sure if Jesus existed, there was something special about him. The same could be said of Dave! if several books were written about him. But in either case, we’d have to take the most cautious and skeptical approach to any claims of the supernatural. But sure, there must have been something special about Jesus. Just probably not anything supernatural.

all I mean to say is that since the beginning of time, religion has been an integral part of human existence and understanding. I am beginning to formulate a theory that it has replaced instinct as our roadmap for living. What do you think?

I think explaining the ubiquity of religion in terms of natural selection is a fascinating area of study, and one that’s really only just getting underway. But as you do seem to recognize, the longevity of animism does not say anything about whether spirits inhabit inanimate objects anymore than the longevity of Christianity supports the truth of Jesus being a supernatural divine figure.

The problem is that one cannot speak of “Christianity” as a monolithic entity. I differ wildly from millions of other Christians on many theological issues. The difference between you and I is that you believe that such differences, or contradictions, necessarily negate Christianity, while I don’t.

I would not say the fact that different sects of Christians can hold diametrically opposed views, in and of itself, negates Christianity. Such a state could arise even if some form of Christianity was true.

All I meant to point out is that you seem to sometimes not recognize the diversity of Christian beliefs when you make monolithic statements about God, religion, or Christianity.

So illustration gets the eyeballs, but I also think it often forces people to think about what’s in the Bible more than just reading it does. It’s one thing to read a list of seven city names that the Israelites destroyed, but it’s another to view a series of seven illustrations of the violence being carried out on city after city of people. There’s a reason the White House does its best to keep all violent images and video from the war in Iraq out of the eyes of the US public.

And the reason is that while violence is indeed happening in Iraq, it is not happening as ubiquitiously as it appears when shown on the news. Sheesh, whenever I watch the nightly news (which I rarely do), I feel as if my city is a friggin’ WAR ZONE! If it bleeds, it leads. And misleads.

I haven’t watched TV news in years, so maybe I can’t speak definitely on to what extent they are showing the violence in Iraq, but from the news sources I do read, it seems like the violence really has become startlingly ubiquitous. Has Baghdad gone three consecutive days without a car bomb in 2006? It’s been my observation that most people do not get a real sense of the impact this war is having on the lives of those wounded (both Americans and Iraqis) or the families of those killed. These are real costs that need to be balanced against whatever our supposed goals are.

Yes, the shock thing. Many avant garde artists are bankrupt of vision, relying instead upon shock and tired iconoclasm.

I guess I generally think of iconoclasm as a good and healthy thing. Shock, I think, has its place and its uses. Shock for shock’s sake is usually pretty empty, but as I’ve explained, I think there’s a worthy purpose to it in The Brick Testament.

It’s funny, sure, but funny scary.

But not scary scary.

No, just funny scary. :)

I would say that, no, strictly you cannot actually posit such a God and your attempt to do so turns out to be meaningless in the same way it would if I defined a hoohoo as a married bachelor. Just because you string words together and follow rules of grammar does not mean that they have any sensible meaning.

Are you familiar with the hypercube? A hypercube can’t logically exist in three dimensional space, but theoretically can in fourth dimensional space. Likewise, a cube cannot exist on a two dimensional surface. A cube can pass through a two-dimensional surface, but won’t be perceived as a cube, but as some sort of triangle or polygon (depending on the angle of attack). The point is that God is immensely more complicated than a hypercube, so although His existence is illogical and fantastic, it only means that we are too puny to comprehend Him.

OK, but if you were in a 2-D universe and saw a cube passing through, it would still not make sense for you to describe it in inconsistent terms. For example, if you described it as a “square circle”, that would not make sense. It would still not make sense even in a 3-D, 4-D, or 84,000-D universe.

Just because your definition of God makes no sense in our world does not mean there’s some higher plain where hoohoos and your God can happily exist and make perfect sense despite their having inconsistent definitions.

It is irrational and illogical for something to suddenly just exist, wouldn’t you agree?

When it comes to the universe as a whole, I don’t know. If the laws of physics did not become laws until after the big bang, I would not know how to judge the likelihood of things just coming into existence in the absence of any laws of physics.

And yet at some point in time, this universe DIDN’T exist. How is that rationally possible?

As stated earlier in this post, I’m still not sure why it’s not a possibility that the universe has simply always existed. And it may not make any sense to posit a time at which the universe did not exist if time itself began with the big bang.

OK, so God is undefinable, unknowable, and impossible to understand through rational thought, but revelation can make God a snap to understand.

Is that how it appears today-- that God is a snap to understand? Doesn’t appear that way to me.

Well, a lot of people certainly claim to know a lot of things about God the Unknowable, so I guess revelation does makes things a snap to some degree.

That just makes God sound like he’s keeping secrets. If we could understand God through revelation, what kind of God would purposefully keep that understanding from humankind except for inconsistent revelations doled out over the course of thousands of years? What kind of God would allow people to be so vastly mistaken about what God wants from them for thousand of years, knowing the strife his ambiguous and partial revelations have caused?

You don’t need a revelation to know what such a God is like. As is your favorite method, you judge him by his actions! :)

Personally I believe it has to do with preserving free will. God doesn’t violate our free will, and consequences arise from that.

I’ve commented on that above.

Wait, first you say we can know nothing about God through rationality, but now you say it’s “reasonable to assume” that God is perfect? Which is it?

Well, let’s say reasonable to me.

So... you can know God through reason?

And where in the Bible is it revealed that God is perfect?

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

There it is. Jesus even tells you exactly how to be perfect. It’s nothing mysterious or even superhuman:

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor.” Matthew 19:21

Go be perfect, Christians!

(If God is perfect, did he sell all his possessions and give to the poor?)

How do you know which parts of the Bible are revelations and which parts are uncertain knowledge because the Bible was written by different people who understood God and Jesus differently?

I don’t know. I do know that the Bible gets interpreted differently by many people. Who is definitively correct? I don’t know, but as I’ve mentioned before, I look at the actions that stem from the interpretations.

OK, right, so this gets back to my question of how you judge between interpretations of, say, the New Testament, when you depend on the New Testament for the very moral code by which you judge things.

Okie dokley. Here you go: There is a Creator Entity. And this Entity (we’ll just refer to it as “God”) has not only created the universe, but also created you as well. Now what exactly is “you” you ask. Well, let’s say that “you” are also some sort of entity, a consciousness, a soul for the lack of a better word. And so you were born into physical existence.

OK, so not only am I convinced that God exists, but also that I have an immaterial soul that somehow “inhabits” my body and could exist as some sort of immaterial consciousness outside of my body as well? Just trying to work this out.

Why did God create you? Not sure; but He did, and not only that, He gave you a free will to do whatever you want with your life.

Free will limited by my arbitrary circumstances, but OK.

He wants you and everyone else to get the most out of life, and so He provides clues as to how to do that. The clues are somewhat mysterious, because part of the wonder of life is the mystery of it and He didn’t want to be heavy-handed in telling you how to live your life.

OK, so not only are the clues mysterious, I don’t even know what God means by the phrase “get the most out of life”. It seems entirely plausible that, just as two different people could have wildly different ideas of what it means to “get the most out of life”, so might God and I. And in that case, who’s right? Who’s the better authority on what it means to get the most out of my life, me or God?

I think I would also find it very difficult not to resent God’s being coy, especially if he’s withholding knowledge that would absolutely improve my life. It would be very difficult to trust such a being.

His plan is that everyone would live together in harmony with each other, helping each other to make the most out of their lives by exploring the mystery of it.

That sounds so vague!

And this existence is only the beginning, but what lies beyond it is yet another mystery.

Great. Could be heaven, could be hell. It’s a mystery! Isn’t that much more fun?

But the point is to make the most of THIS existence.

But what does that mean?

So I ask: how would you react to a scenario such as this?

I guess I’d spend a lot of time wondering why God is so into being mysterious and vague. As for forming my opinion about God, I suppose I could only do so by judging his actions or lack of them.

I still don’t see a compelling reason why I should want what God wants from my life, especially if it conflicts with what seems right and good to me, or if it seems like God doesn’t know what he’s doing.

How would you tweak it to make it more tolerable? (assuming that you begin with the Creator Entity Guy)

Oh, it sounds quite tolerable. :) At least you don’t make this God out to be some sort of malicious being who would make life awful. He sounds well-intentioned, if maybe a bit misguided in execution.

I’m not sure what my options are for “tweaking” things. Can I tweak anything? Do I have god-like powers to change anything in this scenario (except for the Creator God’s existence)? I’m not really sure what I’d do with such power!

I guess I’d tweak God to actively drastically lessen the amounts of suffering in the world. That’d be a good start. And then he can explain his own existence. :)

Fun.

-Brendan

Message has 1 Reply:

		Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
(...) Yes, the medium is cumbersome, but at least it allows for a dialog with people with whom you might not normally engage. For me it is very time consuming, and many times I've left an interesting discussion because suddenly work pops up and I (...) (18 years ago, 13-Nov-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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		Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
(...) I hear that! I'm going to do some snipping to clean up a bit around the thread. (...) <snip> (...) Not at all. I'm just seeing common ground. (...) But you will probably always be irrational though you strive to be rational. You are a closet (...) (18 years ago, 25-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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